tarasacon | Recent Entries

From Medscape, October 26, 2023. A Blood Test to Diagnose Bipolar Disorder?

A blood test that measures biomarkers linked to manic symptoms can accurately identify patients with bipolar disorder (BD) who were previously misdiagnosed with major depressive disorder (MDD), new research shows. Investigators state that the test could identify up to 30% of patients with BD when used on its own and could be even more effective when combined with a standardized psychometric assessment.

METHODOLOGY:
▪️In the proof-of-concept study, investigators sought to identify biomarkers to accurately identify BD, which is frequently misdiagnosed as MDD because of overlapping symptoms and the lack of objective diagnostic tools.
▪️The study included 241 participants (70% female; mean age, 28 years) from the UK-based Delta Study who had been diagnosed with MDD within the past 5 years and had depressive symptoms as assessed with the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (score ≥5).
▪️Participants completed an online questionnaire that included questions from the Mood Disorder Questionnaire and the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale and were asked to return a dried blood spot (DBS) fasting blood sample.
▪️Investigators analyzed the DBS samples for 630 metabolites and contacted participants by phone to establish diagnoses at 6 and 12 months using the World Health Organization World Mental Health Composite International Diagnostic Interview.

TAKEAWAY:
▪️Investigators used a panel of 17 biomarkers to correctly identify 67 (27.8%) participants with BD who had been previously misdiagnosed with MDD. They confirmed MDD in the remaining 174 patients.
▪️The biomarkers used in the test were correlated primarily with lifetime manic symptoms and were validated in a separate group of 30 patients.
▪️The identified biomarker panel provided a mean cross-validated area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.71 (P < .001), with ceramide d18:0/24:1 emerging as the strongest biomarker.
▪️Combining biomarker readouts with patient-reported data significantly improved the performance of diagnostic models based on extensive demographic data and information from the Patient Health Questionnaire and Mood Disorder Questionnaire (P = .03 for all).

IN PRACTICE:
"The added value of biomarkers was particularly evident in scenarios where data on psychiatric symptoms were unavailable and at intermediate diagnostic thresholds, suggesting that biomarker tests may especially benefit patients who do not report their symptoms and whose diagnoses are uncertain," the authors write.

For limitations and disclosures, and a link to the published study, click through to the article.

Earlier this week I utterly binged all 147,000 words of the DS9 fic series Too Wise To Woo Peaceably, by TakePenAndInk. You may have read their various Sherlock stories. I think they do an even better job tackling Deep Space 9!

The series is a coffee shop AU only in the sense that there are no space ships involved and they originally meet in the coffee shop where Julian works. Most of it actually takes place in Garak’s apartment. Garak’s still a tailor, and in exile. Bashir is a medical student at university. It’s slow burn, which I love. There are lots of emotions as two suspicious, complicated people (with secrets!) become involved with each other and try to figure out how much and how far to trust.

Thing I especially liked: realistic and emotional sex scenes, with an emphasis on consent. There’s communication and awkwardness and awkward communication, and condoms and lube (and more lube!) and trying to read minds and failing. From part 2 onwards there are a lot of sexy times, many of them explicit. Also: food, cooking, literature, a bisexual awakening, self-doubt, pining, and a desire not to be Too Much. (I relate to that one.)

The first story in the series is An Interesting New Friend. It doesn’t get any farther than a great deal of yearning, and a kiss. It’s just shy of 12,000 words, and deserves far more than the ~130 kudos it’s gotten so far. I highly recommend giving it a try!

I thought I had read all the highly rated Sherlock fics. Mostly I have. But I recently rewatched the series, which led to my seeking Season 3 fix-it stories, which led me to Points, by lifeonmars.

It’s one I previously skipped because I have a severe dislike for any John/Mary pairing, but I’m so glad I finally read it. The writing is just lovely, with complicated emotions and self-revelation. The phrasing and pacing keep it rolling forward, but slowly, layers both building and revealing as relationships shift. I don’t often *slow down* for things I’m reading, but I savored this.

And if you join me in disliking Mary, this story actually makes her… like-able? I also really like the relationship between Sherlock and Mycroft.

Content note: pregnancy, birth, complicated relationships, dissolution of a relationship.

Just read a semi-recent post-canon DS9 fanfic, and found myself wondering “How does this only have ~460 kudos???” Okay, so not everyone is a Garashir fan (Garak/Bashir), but still!

The story is call me by the old familiar name, by simplyprologue. It’s a smidge over 40,000 words, and maybe it’s my current state of mind but I found it very well written. There’s grief and suspense and intrigue and pining and poetry and LOVE.

Author’s summary:
Fourteen years after the end of the Dominion War, Bajor and Cardassia are finally poised to enter the United Federation of Planets, together. But when Castellan Garak and Military Minister Kira find the body of Julian Bashir—with a heavily encrypted datarod containing the last fifty years of covert operations by Section 31 in his hand—on the eve of the treaty signing on Deep Space Nine, negotiations fall apart.

There is some nuance to it, of course, but what is nuance when your friend’s dead body has been found in a stasis container in Cargo Bay Four?

Or, Julian dies in the name of service to the Alpha Quadrant, but does a poor job staying dead. It does get his friends back together in one place, though.

First paragraph:
Negotiations fall apart, once the corpse is discovered.

There is some nuance to it, of course, but what is nuance when your friend’s dead body has been found in a stasis container in Cargo Bay Four?

My favorite tag for the story:
Garak Can't Pick His Feelings Out of a Police Lineup and that's Very Valid of Him

( The bit I put in my bookmark- early in the story so not really a spoiler: )

I was searching AO3 for crossover fics and stumbled on the author Ginevra_Benci.

That led me to the 7,900 word Knaves All Three, a Batman-Avengers-Daredevil crossover that is banter and crack. (Warning for some very mildly dubious consent in the form of flirting/macking on someone who is uncomfortable with it.)

From there I went hunting through their other works, and discovered a truly delightful Sherlock soulmate AU. If soulmate identifying marks are your thing, I highly recommend Plenipotentials. It’s ~54K of case fic and Mystrade (Mycroft Holmes/Gregory Lestrade) and soulmate theory. It’s very well done!

I enjoy a well-done crossover fic. Lately I’ve been binging Burn Notice, so of course I checked to see what’s been written for it. I found Smoke on the Water, by ratherastory.

It’s a crossover with Supernatural, ~27,000 words, general audience. I think it’s set during season 2 of Burn Notice and season 3 of Supernatural but it’s been a long time since I watched Supernatural so I won’t swear to that.

Summary: Casefic. Former spy Michael Westen has enough problems of his own ―not least of which is figuring out who burned him and why. Now, on top of that, his mother is accepting jobs on his behalf. He really doesn't have time for this, but when he starts investigating the unsolved deaths of young people in Miami, he finds himself crossing paths with an unlikely pair of brothers. In Michael's line of work, suspicion is par for the course, and he has to figure out whether Sam and Dean Winchester are friends or foes before even more lives are lost.

The story: https://archiveofourown.org/works/210038/chapters/314301

If you have a crossover you’ve enjoyed, please share! :)

A small study has found that neurofeedback training can help patients with PTSD control their amygdala reactivity. Some key points:

Scientists recently investigated the use of neurofeedback training to help individuals with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) regulate activity in their amygdala, a brain region which plays a key role in fear responses. Their findings, published in Translational Psychiatry, showed that the participants who received neurofeedback training were able to gain better control over their amygdala activity after recalling traumatic events. […]

“PTSD seems like a promising disorder to target via neurofeedback because it is a disorder in which unhealthy brain patterns are learned during or following trauma exposure,” said study author Michelle Hampson, a professor of radiology and biomedical imaging at Yale School of Medicine and editor of fMRI Neurofeedback. “This suggests the circuitry giving rise to PTSD symptoms is plastic and can be altered via natural learning. For this reason, I was hopeful that neurofeedback would be effective at training the brain circuitry involved towards healthier function. Also, neurofeedback is an empowering mental health intervention that I believe will appeal to PTSD patients.”

The study was conducted as a double-blind, randomized clinical trial with a total of 24 participants with chronic PTSD. Participants were recruited through online advertisements and community outreach. They underwent screening using standardized clinical interviews to confirm the diagnosis of PTSD.

Results were positive, but complicated by the small number of participants, and the Covid-19 pandemic. “Further research with a larger sample size is needed to evaluate if neurofeedback provides specific clinical benefits beyond the non-specific effects of the intervention. “Large, well-controlled trials are needed to establish efficacy, and explore which individuals are most likely to benefit from this kind of intervention,” Hampson said.”

The full article: https://www.psypost.org/2023/06/neurofeedback-training-can-help-patients-with-ptsd-control-their-amygdala-reactivity-study-finds-165825

The original study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-023-02467-6

Somehow I have missed the phenomenon of Bunny the “talking” dog. Bunny is a young sheepadoodle who is part of a study on comparative cognition, and the results are fascinating. And adorable/fun. 🙂🙃🙂

The ~3.5 minute video is not consistently captioned, but an auto-generated transcript is available through youtube.

Meet Bunny the talking dog! Video shows how she communicates with buttons

“A Liquid Tree? Scientists in Serbia Make Incredible Innovation”

Dr. Ivan Spasojevic, from the Institute for Multidisciplinary Research at the University of Belgrade, has developed Serbia’s first urban photo-bioreactor, a solution in the fight for clean air.

Significant chunks of the article below.

According to the IHME Global Health Data Exchange Tool, “pollution kills three times as many people a year as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined”.

Because of two very large coal power plants, Belgrade is one of the most polluted cities in Serbia. In fact, these two power plants are so intense, they were included in the 2019 Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL)’s list of 10 dirtiest plants in Europe.

Overall, Serbia ranked 28 in the world for worst air quality in 2020. Currently, the nation has a PM 2.5 concentration, which is 4.9 times above the WHO annual air quality guideline value. It is then no surprise that the country’s citizens suffer from intense side effects of such pollution. […] 59% of the Serbian population lives in urban areas and that the number is constantly increasing. Because the population density is so high, creating green areas and planting trees – which represent natural air purification in urban areas– is a complex goal to achieve, as there is a lack of free areas for landscaping.

Dubbed LIQUID 3

[…] the novel creation is Serbia’s first urban photo-bioreactor, a solution in the fight for clean air. It contains six hundred litres of water and works by using microalgae to bind carbon dioxide and produce pure oxygen through photosynthesis.

The microalgae replace two 10-year-old trees or 200 square meters of lawn. The function of the LIQUID 3 is practically an imitation of it. Both trees and grass perform photosynthesis and bind carbon dioxide. However, the advantage of microalgae is that it is 10 to 50 times more efficient than trees. The team behind LIQUID 3 has stated that their goal is not to replace forests or tree planting plans but to use this system to fill those urban pockets where there is no space for planting trees. In conditions of intense pollution, such as Belgrade, many trees cannot survive, while algae do not have a problem with the great levels of pollution.

“The photobioreactor is a completely new biotechnological solution for air purification and the production of oxygen. In an aquarium of six hundred liters of water, we have algae that bind carbon dioxide and produce pure oxygen through photosynthesis. The project is designed to be multifunctional. LIQUID3 is also a bench, it has chargers for mobile phones, as well as a solar panel, thanks to which the bench has lighting during the night.

I was talking about plants with

ysabetwordsmith, and was thinking about my childhood experiences with plants and nature. As a kid, as for most people, I thought what my family did was “normal.” As an adult, I am able to suspect that it’s not necessarily common for people to have spent a lot of time in a place that has its own entry in Atlas Obscura.

My family spent a lot of time along the Oregon coast. The Darlingtonia State Natural Site was one of our touchstone stops. It’s a small park, tucked away off Hwy 101, easy to miss if you don’t know it’s there. But it’s raised wooden boardwalk zags above a bog filled with the distinct scents of swamp cabbage and sun and damp and moss, and the drone of numerous winged insects.

Darlingtonia californica is the only species in its genus. It grows in sunny wet areas near streams or in bogs throughout Northern California and Western Oregon, and possibly up the coast into British Columbia. It is not dependent on serpentine soil, but it can grow in such soils and tolerates soil with toxic or heavy metals. Carnivorous plants adapted as a way to get the nitrogen they need from insects, since when the soil where they grow isn’t able to supply enough. Pitcher plants use scent and color to attract insects. Once the flies and other winged beasties are lured in, the design of the pitcher disorients them. They end up trapped, eventually sliding to the bottom of the pitcher and being dissolved.

A few weeks ago I was flipping between reading Irondad & Spiderson fics (stories where Tony Stark takes a parental role to Peter Parker), and Starker fics (stories where Tony Stark and Peter Parker are lovers). It hurt my brain.

Relevant: I only read consensual, aged-up Starker fics. There aren’t many that are very good. The power imbalance between the two characters, at least in the MCU, is challenging enough without Peter also being underage. (I haven’t read enough of the comics to sort out the options, but at least some of them have Peter as a successful adult who owns his own company. That would certainly be a different dynamic.)

I now seem to have moved onto time travel fics.

What I’m currently wondering: why no one seems to have written a fic where Tony is snapped, and Peter (and possibly Harley) work to bring him back. This way Peter ages 5 years in comparison to Tony and gets a fair bit of life experience. It’s a means for a more equal pairing between them. It means giving up Pepperony, but lots of other pairings require that shift, too.

What gave me the general idea is jessmariano’s excellent series built from scraps. In it Peter and Nebula return after Tony is snapped. May Parker has also been snapped, leaving Peter with no guardian, so Pepper takes Peter in and raises him. It’s a good series, lots of character development. Long, though, and be warned that if you read past parts 1 & 2 that parts 4 & 5 build a plot arc that is unfinished!!!

However built from scraps is *very* firmly in the realm of Irondad & Spiderson.
***
Unrelated, but a pet peeve:
Spider-man fics that have Peter web from the Avengers compound into the city. I’m especially intolerant of fics that have him making this as a daily commute. Even if the Avengers compound is in lower Westchester County, rather than farther upstate, and assuming someone drives him, that’s ~2-3 hours out of his day each day. For a kid with a heavy course load, lots of homework, and then patrolling. I’m pretty sure these are people who have A) never tried to get around NYC, and B) have never dealt with a significant daily commute, so they just don’t grok how much time and energy it takes and how easily something like that derails.

This is an interesting study from Emory University.

Levodopa, a drug that increases dopamine in the brain, has potential to reverse the effects of inflammation on brain reward circuitry, ultimately improving symptons of depression.

Numerous labs across the world have shown that inflammation causes reduced motivation and anhedonia, a core symptom of depression, by affecting the brain’s reward pathways.

Past research conducted by the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Emory University School of Medicine has linked the effects of inflammation on the brain to decreased release of dopamine, a chemical neurotransmitter that regulates motivation and motor activity, in the ventral striatum.

In the Nature study, researchers demonstrated that levodopa reversed the effects of inflammation on the brain’s functional connectivity in reward circuitry and anhedonia (inability to feel pleasure) in depressed individuals with higher C-reactive protein (CRP), a blood biomarker produced and released by the liver in response to inflammation.

Levels of inflammation can be easily measured by simple blood tests, like CRP, readily available in clinics and hospitals throughout the U.S.

Principal investigator and senior author Jennifer C. Felger, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, Emory School of Medicine, says the study findings are critical for two reasons. “First, they suggest depressed patients with high inflammation may specifically respond to drugs that increase dopamine.

Second, these findings also provide additional evidence that functional connectivity in reward circuitry may serve as a reliable brain biomarker for the effects of inflammation on the brain.”
***

The news release: https://news.emory.edu/stories/2023/01/som_bhc_inflammation_felger/story.html

The actual study:
Functional connectivity in reward circuitry and symptoms of anhedonia as therapeutic targets in depression with high inflammation: evidence from a dopamine challenge study published in Nature’s Molecular Psychiatry August, 2022.

A tiny little clam that was previously only known in fossils has been found alive. I recommend clicking through to see pictures if you want a sense of size, but it’s about as big as one of my fingernails.

A species of clam known only by the 28,000-year-old fossils it left behind has turned up alive and well on an American shoreline.

The small, translucent bivalve, known as Cymatioa cooki, was recently discovered hiding in the rocky intertidal zone of southern California – a place carefully combed over by scientists for many, many years.

[…] "When I suspect something is a new species, I need to track back through all of the scientific literature from 1758 to the present. It can be a daunting task, but with experience it can go pretty quickly."

It was during this intensive search that scientists found an illustration of a fossilized clam drawn in 1937.

It had been collected by a local woman, named Edna Cook, in the Baldwin Hills of Los Angeles, and classified by scientists at the time as Bornia cooki (the genus name has now been changed to Cymatioa). This archaeological site is dated to between 28,000 and 36,000 years old, representing a time in the late Pleistocene when sea levels reached much further inland than they do now.

[…] "There is such a long history of shell-collecting and malacology in Southern California – including folks interested in the harder to find micro-mollusks – that it's hard to believe no one found even the shells of our little cutie," says Goddard.

No one really knows what habitats these clams prefer, or why they once left Southern California. However, researchers suspect that these 'living fossils' only recently re-entered the region, carried northwards as larvae during the marine heatwaves that occurred between 2014 and 2016.

From September 19, 2022 article in phys.org
Pando in pieces: Understanding the new breach in the world's largest living thing.

It's ancient, it's massive, and it is faltering. The gargantuan aspen stand dubbed "Pando," located in south-central Utah, is more than 100 acres of quivering, genetically identical plant life, thought to be the largest living organism on earth (based on dry weight mass, 13 million pounds). What looks like a shimmering panorama of individual trees is actually a group of genetically identical stems with an immense shared root system. Now, after a lifetime that may have stretched across millennia, the 'trembling giant' is beginning to break up, according to new research.

Why do we care? “As a keystone species, aspen forests support high levels of biodiversity—from chickadees to thimbleberry. As aspen ecosystems flourish or diminish, myriad dependent species follow suit. Long-term failure for new recruitment in aspen systems may have cascading effects on hundreds of species dependent on them.”

Evaluation of Pando five years ago showed that browsing deer and cattle “were harming the stand—limiting growth of new aspen suckers and putting an effective expiration date on the colossal plant. As older trees aged-out, new aspen sprouts weren't surviving voracious browsers to replace them. Pando was slowly dying.”

In response to the threat, managers erected fencing around a section of the stand to keep grazing animals out, creating an experiment of sorts. Paul Rogers, director of the Western Aspen Alliance, recently returned to evaluate the strategy, and to do a well-check on the overall health of Pando.

Pando seems to be taking three disparate ecological paths based on how the segments are managed, according to the research. Around 16% of the stand is adequately fenced to keep out browsing animals; new aspen suckers surviving those first tender years to establish into new trees. But across more than a third of the stand, fencing had fallen into disrepair and was only lately reinforced. Past browsing still has adverse impacts in this section; old and dying trees still outnumbering the young. And the areas that remain unfenced (approximately 50% of the stand) continue to have concentrated levels of deer and cattle consuming the bulk of young sprouts. These hard-hit zones are now shifting ecologically in distinct ways, said Rogers. Mature aspen stems die without being replaced, opening the overstory and allowing more sunlight to consistently reach the forest floor, which alters plant composition. These unfenced areas are experiencing the most rapid aspen decline, while the other fenced areas are taking their own unique courses—in effect, breaking up this unique, historically uniform, forest.

(Tarasacon sez: I’m not sure if we know enough to say that this giant organism becoming fragmented is - in the really long/geological term- inherently bad. But I’m comfortable saying that having it happen at the speed with which it’s taking place, after what has likely been thousands of years of survival, is definitely not good. It’s another vote for this being the Anthropocene era.)

Rogers notes, "Although the fencing strategy is well-intentioned, we'll ultimately need to address the underlying problems of too many browsing deer and cattle on this landscape."

(Tarasacon sez: Fixing yer wolf problems seems like a good start. “Due to a recent court ruling, wolves in much of Utah are once again listed as endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act.” March 3, 2022, https://wildlife.utah.gov/wolves.html)

The direct html link to the article:
https://phys.org/news/2022-09-pando-pieces-breach-world-largest.html

I recently learned about Z-library.

It’s similar to archive.org, but in my limited comparison so far, more useable.

Z-Library “is a library that is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.” With over 11 million books and 84 million scientific articles, they claim to be the world’s largest ebook library. I’m mentioning them to you because by my quick scan of available categories they specialize in textbooks and nonfiction. Linguistics, engineering, biological sciences, computer science, architecture, law - it’s all there! There are also books on gardening, woodworking, cooking, paper crafts, lock picking. Me, I’m thrilled to find 900+ titles just for crochet! They also have kids books, mysteries, contemporary fiction, graphic novels and manga, and more.

You can use the site as a guest, but a free registered account gets you greater access, and a small donation increases the available services for some period of time.

People have expressed interest in the links between the gut microbiome, inflammation, and “mental” health. I’m procrastinating on something else, so I just pulled together several studies on the subject and I’m trying to figure out how to present them. I know scientific language can be intimidating if you aren’t used to it, and overwhelming if trying to hold onto concepts through brain fog. So how much introduction and translation do people want/need?

Example terms pulled these from the studies in question:

- microbiota / microbiome
- epidemiological
- enterotypes
- commensal / commensalism
- inflammation
- adjunctive

For my own peace of mind I will probably at least explain what is meant by “intestinal microbiome” and give an idea of other terms used to describe it. But I’d appreciate an idea how much extraction and translation people would appreciate beyond “here’s links to relevant studies, go read them.”

There’s no wrong answer, and I can leave your comment screened if you want.

I’m still sorting out which studies make the most sense to share, and I’m a little overwhelmed by the 5,000+ results I got from just one of my searches. This is a field that is constantly evolving so I need to catch up a bit. And because Life and ADHD, I might get dragged into other things and fail to come back to this in a timely fashion. However please feel free to poke me if you feel sufficient time has passed it might be helpful to remind me. Knowing someone/anyone is still interested will help me refocus!

Scientists from Israel have discovered that they can use saliva samples to quickly and accurately diagnose people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Excerpts from the article below.

In a study published in Nature’s Molecular Psychiatry magazine, researchers from Tel Aviv and Haifa Universities took saliva samples and investigated the psychological, social and medical conditions of about 200 Israeli veteran soldiers. They discovered that soldiers who had experienced combat stress related reactions from Israel’s first war with Lebanon in 1982, and were still suffering post-trauma, showed a typical microbial picture in their saliva. […]

The researchers say the results may help doctors in the future to reach an accurate and objective diagnosis of people suffering from post-trauma and even lay the groundwork for microbiotic-related medications to alleviate the condition. […]

The participants in the study came from a larger cohort of subjects involved in a comprehensive four-decade-long study of veterans by Solomon.

The researchers tested them for a range of psychological aspects, including sleep, appetite disorders, guilt, suicidal thoughts, social and spousal support, hostility, satisfaction with life, as well as issues of demographics, psychopathology, welfare, health and education.

Comparing the results of the subjects’ microbial distribution to the psychological results and their responses to the welfare questionnaires, the researchers discovered that people with PTSD and high psychopathological indications exhibit the same picture of bacteria in the saliva (a unique oral microbiotic signature).

“It must be stressed that until now, post-trauma diagnosis has been based solely on psychological and psychiatric measures,” said Gozes. “Thanks to this study, it may be possible, in the future, to use objective molecular and biological characteristics to distinguish PSTD sufferers, taking into account environmental influences.

https://www.israel21c.org/study-ptsd-sufferers-share-bacterial-footprint-in-saliva/

My smaller thanksgiving cactus didn’t want to bloom until after Xmas, and the Kalanchoe is also being slow to open. HOWEVER, since both plants are night-length sensitive** for blooming, and I’m an insomniac, I’m quite proud of convincing them to set buds and bloom in a home environment rather than a greenhouse!

Image description: a small, bright pink thanksgiving cactus blooms in front of a window. To its right is a florist’s Kalanchoe and a small avocado plant. Assorted hand tools are scattered in front of the plants.

Assorted house plants and tools on a chest in front of a window

Assorted house plants and tools on a chest in front of a window

**Many of what are often called short-day plants or long-day plants, in reference to their photoperiodism, are actually long-night plants or short-night plants. That is, the key factor is getting sufficient hours of darkness for some number of weeks in order to bloom.

Sharing most of the first half of this synopsis of a study on crabs. Y’all can go read the second, more technical half if you wish - there are pretty pictures, too! My sole editorial comment: there’s a reason crab-shaped creatures make good alien beings.

When researchers attempted to reconcile the evolutionary history of crabs in all their raucous glory just earlier this year, they arrived at the conclusion that the defining features of crabbiness have evolved at least five times in the past 250 million years.

What's more, crabbiness has been lost possibly seven times or more.

This repeated evolution of a crab-like body plan has happened so often it has its own name: carcinization. (And yes, if you lose crabbiness to evolution, it's called decarcinization.)

Frog crabs (Raninidae) are one unusual example. Features of the crab body plan were also lost en route to almost-legless Puerto Rican sand crabs (Emerita portoricensis) and various lop-sided hermit crabs – but then red king crabs regained crabby features at the last evolutionary minute.

Why evolution keeps crafting and shafting the crab-like body plan remain but a mystery, though evolution must be doing something right in fashioning crabby creatures time and time again.

There are thousands of crab species, which thrive in almost every habitat on Earth, from coral reefs and abyssal plains to creeks, caves and forests.

Crabs also boast an impressive display of sizes. The smallest, the pea crab (Pinnothera faba), measures just millimeters, while the largest, the Japanese spider crab (Macrocheira kaempferi), spans nearly 4 meters (around 12 feet) from claw to claw.

With their species richness, extravagant array of body shapes and rich fossil record, crabs are an ideal group to study trends in biodiversity through time. But finding some order in the chaos of crabs is an ongoing challenge.

If you want to read the entire original paper instead of a summary, “How to become a crab: Phenotypic constraints on a recurring body plan” is available here:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/bies.202100020

This article, Yams and sweet potatoes are totally different vegetables — here's how to tell the difference (by Laurel Randolph, Business Insider, Nov. 5, 2021), covers one of my stronger plant geekery annoyances. I’ve excerpted the most relevant part.

What's the difference?
Yams are a rough-skinned, starchy veggie with pale flesh, while sweet potatoes are smaller and tapered with smooth skin. Yams are commonly cultivated and consumed in parts of Africa, South America, Asia, and the Caribbean.

There's a very good chance that if you're buying "yams" at an American grocery store, they are actually sweet potatoes. This includes canned yams and candied yams, which are all made from sweet potatoes.

Even though they are completely different vegetables, yams and sweet potatoes get lumped together because of bad marketing. The confusion all started when the orange-fleshed variety of sweet potatoes was introduced to the United States in the 1930s.

"In order to distinguish it from the white variety [of sweet potato] everyone was accustomed to, producers and shippers chose the English form of the African word 'nyami' and labeled them yams," says Grainger. Enslaved Africans in the United States were already referring to existing sweet potatoes as yams because of their resemblance to the African staple crop, and the name stuck.

Unless you shop at a grocery store with an impressive international produce department or are visiting an African or Caribbean market, you likely won't come across true yams in the US. They are considered a specialty item and don't typically make it into a standard American produce section. If you see a vegetable or canned good labeled as a yam, it is most likely a sweet potato.